We have updated the underlying framework bringing some performance and compatibility improvements

Attention to Android users: read more

We have removed the possibility to disable SSL validation in this update due to a Google Play restriction. We know there are some users depending on this feature and we recommend to not update if you cannot make the SSL certificate valid for your Piwik Analytics domain.

We are excited today to announce our publicly available Piwik 3.0.0 beta 3 release. We have been been working hard behind the scenes on the new 3.0.0 release for almost one year now. We, the passionate team at Piwik, are dedicated to bringing you a new and improved Piwik experience and invite you to join our beta channel to switch to Piwik 3 today!

Enable the beta release channel

Ready to enjoy a much faster Piwik experience and the magic of a modern user interface? Follow the instructions here and you can upgrade to Piwik 3.0.0 beta in just one click.

Please note that beta versions have a risk of containing bugs so we don’t recommend to use on a production server. If you find and report a bug in a beta version, we will aim to fix it as quickly as possible.

Premium plugins in Piwik 3

In the Piwik Marketplace you can discover & download plugins to enrich the functionality of your Piwik, as well as themes to change the look and feel of your Piwik user interface. The Marketplace integration was much improved in this new release, most notably: you can now purchase and download Premium plugins within Piwik!

Important changes

The full list of more than 150 changes can be found in the Piwik 3 beta changelogs: beta 1, beta 2, beta 3.

What to do next

When you use the Piwik beta channel and if you come across any issues in Piwik such as a bug, feature missing, regression… let us know on our tracker and create a new issue so we can get this sorted.

As we are in the final days of Piwik 3 development, we are looking forward to your feedback and help testing!

Welcome to the future of Piwik,

Happy Analytics!

]]>https://piwik.org/blog/2016/11/piwik-3-0-0-almost-try-latest-piwik-3-0-0-beta-version/feed/0A/B Testing Platform for Piwik Analyticshttps://piwik.org/blog/2016/11/ab-testing-platform-piwik-analytics/
https://piwik.org/blog/2016/11/ab-testing-platform-piwik-analytics/#respondThu, 10 Nov 2016 21:29:00 +0000https://piwik.org/?p=22666Read More]]>We are very excited to launch A/B Testing – a powerful new product designed to help you maximise your success and increase your conversions.

What is A/B Testing and why is it so important?

Experimenting with A/B Testing is an important marketing strategy that goes a long way in maximising your conversions.

With A/B Testing you can start improving your conversions and sales in your existing website or app by creating different versions of a web page or mobile app screen to find out how to modify your website to optimize business success.

How does A/B Testing work?

To explain how A/B Testing works, let’s take an example. Imagine one of your most important landing pages has been redesigned to hopefully get more email signups. Now you need to make sure the new version is “better” than the current version, or at least does result in less conversions. To compare the performance of these two versions, you can then run an A/B test whereby the A/B testing product tells you whether the redesigned version is producing more email signups compared to the original version.

How it works is that visitors on your website during the experiment will see a randomly chosen version (variation) and A/B Testing makes sure that your users will always see the same variation for all subsequent visits. The behaviour and goals converted by each user is measured continuously by Piwik A/B Testing. The beautifully designed and easy to use dashboard shows how each variation impacts your success metrics such as conversions, sales or page views.

When the A/B test is complete, you will then know which is the winning version getting you closer to reaching your goals! A/B Testing includes an advanced statistical analysis engine to provide a reliable indicator of which of your versions is actually improving your bottom line.

Examples of successful A/B tests

Increase click on CTA button by 21%

We actually conducted an A/B test on button color and found that changing the CTA button from green to red increased clicks by 21%. In the world of website optimization, that’s huge!

47.7% more clicks on the navigation bar

An A/B test comparing the phrases used on the navigation bar discovered that the menu link “How It Works” earned 47.7% more clicks than “Why Use Us.”

5% more conversions using a different image

Highrise, a small business CRM, A/B tested their website’s imagery by featuring two different people – Jocelyn on the left, and Michael on the right. They found Michael helped improve conversions by almost 5%.

Changing the headline to increase conversions by 38%

WhichTestWon ran an A/B test on AwayFind’s homepage and found that Version B increased signups by 38%. This could be because the headline is more concise and the subheader includes bolded words to clearly communicate the product’s value

Where do I start testing?

Your testing strategy is tied to your overall business strategy. What do you want people to achieve on your website? What are the goals that you want your users to convert? What are your one or two Key Performance Indicators, and what are your targets for these KPIs?

When you start thinking of improving your targets you can begin by looking at the most important parts that can be improved:

What are your call to actions?

Which are your most popular pages, and landing pages?

What elements of my website is above the fold and can be seen by all visitors within a few seconds?

How do I get A/B Testing?

All premium plugins come with our 14 day money back guarantee and 1-click installation & updates. Customers get all product updates for free.

]]>https://piwik.org/blog/2016/11/ab-testing-platform-piwik-analytics/feed/0Powerful Video Analytics and Audio Analytics for Piwikhttps://piwik.org/blog/2016/11/powerful-video-analytics-audio-analytics-piwik/
https://piwik.org/blog/2016/11/powerful-video-analytics-audio-analytics-piwik/#respondThu, 10 Nov 2016 02:48:01 +0000https://piwik.org/?p=22646Read More]]>Over the years, one of the most frequently requested feature by users was to be able to measure how videos and audios are watched and engaged with on your website. We are finally able to announce that it is here! We are very excited to launch Media Analytics, which will help you understand and grow your audience.

This article is a showcase of the new powerful video and audio analytics product built for Piwik.

Why media analytics?

We all love media content such as videos as they can make our experiences on websites and apps so much more interesting. A growing number of websites now utilize media files in one form or another: a video presentation of a product or service, a video tutorial teaching you how to do something or interviews with key speakers. Also many creators and distributors are publishing audio files such as podcasts or music songs, and even broadcasting live video events such as music concerts or an entire conference online.

Whenever you publish videos or audio media on your websites or applications, Media Analytics provides you with clear insights on how your audience interacts with your content. It helps you see what content works and why – so you can better understand and further grow your business!

Valuable insights in Real time

See where your audience comes from.

How will Media Analytics help me grow?

Better understand your audience: who are the users playing videos and for how long, how often, and where have they dropped off.

Gain quick insights into how interaction with your media changes over time with easy to use graphs and report overviews.

Get closer to your users by seeing every action of your visitors before and after they utilized your media.

]]>https://piwik.org/blog/2016/11/powerful-video-analytics-audio-analytics-piwik/feed/0Premium Plugins now available on the Piwik Analytics Marketplacehttps://piwik.org/blog/2016/11/premium-plugins-now-available-marketplace/
https://piwik.org/blog/2016/11/premium-plugins-now-available-marketplace/#respondWed, 02 Nov 2016 01:59:14 +0000https://piwik.org/?p=22615Read More]]>We are super excited to announce the launch of three new premium plugins which are now available on the Piwik Marketplace: A/B Testing, Media Analytics, and Activity Log.

All three plugins are easy to use and come with 100% data ownership, documentation, integration with Piwik, powerful data exports and no data limits.

These first premium plugins and the new Marketplace capabilities have been designed and built with love by InnoCraft – the new company brought to you by the makers of Piwik.

1. A/B Testing

A/B Testing helps you grow your business by comparing different versions of your website or app to detect the most successful version that increases your sales, revenue, conversions, pageviews, and more.

A/B tests are also known as experiments or split tests. In an A/B test you show two or more different variations to your users (visitors) and the variation that performs better wins. When a user enters the experiment, a variation will be randomly chosen and the user will see this variation for all subsequent visits. Piwik A/B testing uses advanced statistical analysis to detect which variation performs better for your conversion goals and success metrics. Even small tests can increase your sales and conversions massively!

2. Media Analytics

Do you have videos or audio on your website, or in an app? Media Analytics gives you powerful insights into how your audience watches your videos and listens to your audio, to ultimately maximize your success.

Learn all about your audience. Which media your users are playing, for how long, how often, and where they dropped off? Where are your users located around the world? Who your audience are and what did people do before and after watching a video or listening to audio? Many of the reports are also available in Real time, so you can gain insights and react quickly.

3. Activity log

The activity log, also known as audit log or audit trail, improves your Piwik’s security and diagnostic by showing a chronological set of entries that provides documentary evidence of activities that happened in your Piwik. It allows Piwik Super Users to quickly review the actions performed by members of your organization or clients, and also lets every user review details of their own actions.

The Piwik Marketplace guarantees

Why premium plugins?

Researching, building, documenting, testing and maintaining quality products take years of experience and months of work. When you purchase a premium plugin from the Marketplace, you get a fully working product, with free updates for the duration of the license and you stay in full control of your analytics data. When purchasing premium plugins you also directly help the Piwik core engineers to continue to grow and innovate! That’s because a % of earnings on premium plugin license sales directly fund new Piwik versions and more amazing features. Learn more in the FAQ: What are premium plugins?.

About InnoCraft

These first three premium plugins have been designed and built with love by InnoCraft. InnoCraft is a new company founded by the creator of Piwik along with the lead engineers of Piwik based in Wellington, New Zealand. At InnoCraft, product experts, designers and engineers are passionate about crafting high quality and innovative products to help grow your business and to maximize your success.

Is the Piwik Marketplace open to all?

Yes, our marketplace allows other companies and developers to sell their plugins to all Piwik Analytics users. If you are a developer or a company interested in selling your plugin(s) on our Marketplace please contact us. As a developer selling plugins, you will get paid every month for your earnings, and you will be able to see detailed reports about your sales, upload new plugin updates, respond to pre-sales enquiries, etc.

Resources

Learn more:

The Piwik.org Privacy Policy has been updated (a new “Scope” and “Contact us” sections).

The goal of the Piwik project is to build the best open digital analytics platform that lets you measure what matters to you while giving you full control of your data. The beauty of the Piwik Analytics platform is that it can be customized and extended by building or installing new features on top of the Piwik core.

On our open Piwik Marketplace you can already discover and download over 70 free plugins which enrich the functionality of your Piwik in many ways, and themes which change the look and feel of the Piwik user interface. To help users make more of their analytics data and ultimately be more successful, in a few weeks we will offer you the possibility to purchase subscriptions for premium features in the Marketplace.

Get more out of your Piwik

Opening the Marketplace for paid plugins will bring more premium and enterprise features so you get more out of your Piwik, when you need it. It will also help us, the Piwik team, to further innovate and improve the open-source Piwik platform to realize our mission:

“To create the leading Free and open source analytics platform, and to support global organisations and communities to keep full control over their data.”

1-click installation and update

You will find the new premium features when you browse the Marketplace in your Piwik app and on our Piwik Marketplace website. Purchased plugins will be installable and updatable with one click, just like you are used to from free plugins.

Sell your plugins on the Piwik Marketplace

If you are a developer who wants to sell plugins on our Marketplace, please get in touch. As a vendor you will be able to see reports about your sales, upload new versions of your plugins, reply to pre-sales and support questions, and more. By tapping into the Marketplace’s infrastructure and distribution, including secure payments and distributing plugins to customers, developers can focus on building great products.

Get started developing plugins

]]>https://piwik.org/blog/2016/10/pre-announcement-piwik-marketplace-soon-open-paid-premium-features/feed/1Piwik 3 Development Update #4 – Important notes and breaking changeshttps://piwik.org/blog/2016/10/piwik-3-development-update-4-important-notes-breaking-changes/
https://piwik.org/blog/2016/10/piwik-3-development-update-4-important-notes-breaking-changes/#respondSun, 02 Oct 2016 18:46:18 +0000https://piwik.org/?p=22129Read More]]>As mentioned in the previous development updates #1 New UI design, API changes & release date, #2 Git master branch will become Piwik 3 and #3 Marketplace we are actively working on the Piwik 3 update and we will release a first beta of it soon. While the update brings many new features and bugfixes, it also comes with some important changes that may require your attention which we detail in this blog post.

Database updates

To keep Piwik upgrades as easy as possible, we have usually avoided database schema changes that affect large tables during the Piwik 2.X release cycle. The Piwik 3 update will however require several database updates in order to fix some limitations and bugs in the Piwik database schema. If you have a fair amount of traffic and/or large Piwik database, we recommend to execute the database updates for Piwik 3 on the command line.

If you struggle updating Piwik you can also get in touch with the Piwik Support and ask for a quote so we can help you with upgrading.

In the past the default filter_limit of 100 rows was applied to HTTP API methods that return a report. This means that by default:

when you requested a method like SitesManager.getAllSites, UsersManager.getUsers or Goals.getGoals (which are not reports), we returned all rows.

when you fetched a report like Actions.getPageUrls (which is a report), the result was limited to 100 rows.

This behaviour was inconsistent and it was hard to understand which methods apply the default limit and which did not. We now apply the default limit to all HTTP API methods by default.

If your API consumer or app needs to fetch all results for an API method, you can append the following parameter to the URL: &filter_limit=-1. Alternatively, if you wish to change the default filter_limit automatically for all APIs, you can override the API_datatable_default_limit config setting in your config/config.ini.php file.

When Piwik is set up to fetch the client IP address from the proxy headers, and the header contained more than one IP address, we used to use the last IP address. From Piwik 3 we will be using the first IP address which is in line with the protocol definition. For example if HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR contains multiple IP addresses, we now use the first IP instead of the last one.

Writable Piwik JavaScript Tracker file piwik.js

From Piwik 3 we recommend to have the file /piwik.js writable in your Piwik directory, so that the PHP and webserver processes can edit this file. It is not required to have the file writable for Piwik to function well, but we are working on some enhanced features that will only work when the file is writable. If you don’t know whether this file is writable, go to “Administration => System Check” as a Super User and Piwik will display a warning if the file is not writable. If needed, you might be able to make the file writable by executing a command like chmod 0755 piwik.js or chown $webuser piwik.js (on Linux).

Changes for plugin developers

In the previous development updates we have already introduced some of the changes that affect Piwik plugin developers. We have made several improvements to the Marketplace that allow developers to promote their plugin better and to maintain their plugin page easier. We have also created a migration guide for plugin developers to make it easier to migrate a plugin to Piwik 3.

]]>https://piwik.org/blog/2016/10/piwik-3-development-update-4-important-notes-breaking-changes/feed/0Piwik 3 Development Update #3 – Marketplace for Piwik Analyticshttps://piwik.org/blog/2016/09/piwik-3-development-update-3-marketplace-piwik-analytics/
https://piwik.org/blog/2016/09/piwik-3-development-update-3-marketplace-piwik-analytics/#respondTue, 13 Sep 2016 03:41:00 +0000https://piwik.org/?p=22080Read More]]>This is our latest Piwik 3 development update where we present all changes that will be shipped with Piwik 3. Learn more about the exciting projects under progress in our Piwik 3 dev update #1 and dev update #2.

The Piwik Marketplace is the place where you can discover & download plugins to enrich the functionality of your Piwik, and themes to change the look and feel of your Piwik user interface. In preparation for our Piwik 3 release we have made several improvements to the Marketplace:

Users can now view more information for a given plugin, such as a link to an online demo, a video demo, how to obtain support from the Plugin’s developer(s), and more.

Users can now view which plugins are compatible with the most recent Piwik version, for example view which plugins are already compatible with Piwik 3.

Plugin developers can now 1) promote their plugin better, 2) easily define requirement(s) for their plugins using composer.json version constraints (a best practise most developers already use) and 3) developers can define which files and directories should be excluded from the publicly available plugin zip packages.

These improvements will make it easier for you to discover new Piwik Analytics plugins to achieve your goals.

Marketplace now supports different Piwik versions

You can now filter plugins by Piwik version to see only plugins that are compatible with your Piwik.

When you browse the Marketplace in the Piwik app itself, you will automatically only see plugins and updates that are compatible with your Piwik.

Better plugin preview

Plugin developers are able to display screenshots for their plugins, and now plugin developers can also specify a demo URL and a video in the “plugin.json” file. Adding a video to your plugin allows users to get a much better understanding of what your plugin does and how a theme looks.

Unified support page

In the past a developer had to define the text that was displayed on the support page. This often resulted in blank support pages or developers only showed an email address. With this new update, links and other support information are displayed in a standardised way as specified in the “support” section of the “plugin.json” file. A developer can now define links to an issue tracker, a wiki, the plugin’s source code and more.

License files

The license name on your plugin’s page is now clickable and can show the license text for your plugin. To define a license text for your plugin, create a file named LICENSE, LICENSE.md or LICENSE.txt.

FAQ and Documentation

In the past a “FAQ” tab was displayed if such a section was present in the plugin’s readme file. This was hard to understand and sometimes ended up in long readme files. Now we pick up the FAQ content from a docs/faq.md file.

For plugins developers who wish to provide a user guide(s), it is now possible to show a “documentation” tab to the plugin page by specifying a docs/index.md file.

Changelog

When you define a file named CHANGELOG, CHANGELOG.md or CHANGELOG.txt in your plugin, we will show the content of this file in a tab “Changelog” on your plugin’s page. Before it was needed to specify the content of the changelog in the readme file.

Migrating your plugin for Piwik 3

We recommend to all plugin developers to specify in the plugin.json file whether their plugin is compatible with Piwik 3 or not. If your plugin defines a “Changelog”, “Support” or “FAQ” section in the README.md file we recommend to migrate this to the new structure. Read more about this in the migration guide.

Until our next Piwik 3 dev update, Happy analysis!

]]>https://piwik.org/blog/2016/09/piwik-3-development-update-3-marketplace-piwik-analytics/feed/0Piwik 3 Development Update #2 – Git master branch will become Piwik 3https://piwik.org/blog/2016/09/piwik-3-development-update-2-git-master-branch-will-become-piwik-3/
https://piwik.org/blog/2016/09/piwik-3-development-update-2-git-master-branch-will-become-piwik-3/#respondThu, 01 Sep 2016 23:51:41 +0000https://piwik.org/?p=22049Read More]]>As mentioned in the Piwik 3 Development Update #1 we are actively working on the new major Piwik 3 release.

This blog post is an announcement regarding an upcoming change on our Git repository.

On October 4th CET, we will merge the current changes done for Piwik 3 from the “3.x-dev” branch into the “master“ branch across our Piwik projects and plugin repositories. While this is not important for most of our users, it can be a problem if you have installed and deployed Piwik from git.

If you are currently on “master” branch and want to continue using Piwik 2, you need to checkout the newly created “2.x-dev” branch instead of “master” anytime within the next 4 weeks. Don’t forget to update your scripts and scheduled tasks (cronjobs) that may reference “master” branch.

If you want to receive an early version of Piwik 3 via git automatically, you won’t have to change anything.

]]>https://piwik.org/blog/2016/09/piwik-3-development-update-2-git-master-branch-will-become-piwik-3/feed/0Piwik 3 Development Update #1 – New UI design, API changes & release datehttps://piwik.org/blog/2016/09/piwik-3-development-update-1-new-ui-design-api-changes-release-date/
https://piwik.org/blog/2016/09/piwik-3-development-update-1-new-ui-design-api-changes-release-date/#respondThu, 01 Sep 2016 07:15:29 +0000https://piwik.org/?p=22024Read More]]>Over the last months, we have been actively working on the Piwik 3 release and we want to introduce you to the changes that we have done so far. They include a new and modern UI redesign, new widgets for your dashboard, and technical improvements under the hood.

New Piwik 3 UI

Based on Material Design we have revamped the user interface which is now more responsive, more usable and faster. While the UI is not yet finished, we invite you to check it out already and to let us know what you think.

This new Piwik material design is a visual language that synthesizes classic principles of good design with the innovation and possibility of technology and science.

More responsive

Piwik 3 will look and feel much better on your mobile phone and tablet. Many elements have been improved: the menus, the segment editor and dashboard selector, the widgets, the settings pages and most other pages so you can fully experience and enjoy Piwik on any device!

Improved usability

We have updated the menu structure, the dashboard selector as well as the footer in reports to make your life easier when using Piwik. We love to keep these complicated things simple. There are also many other tiny improvements that you will appreciate.

The Zen Mode lets you view in full screen your analytics reports and dashboards. Users love this feature and it can now be accessed by pressing “z” key.

Faster

To make the Piwik interface faster, we have refactored most of our CSS, HTML and JavaScript and moved more and more of our code into the client. As a result, Piwik now needs to reload the page much less often! For example when you change the date or change the segment, Piwik will now load the reports instantly. To improve performance even further, Piwik will now load multiple reports on a single page in parallel.

Native fonts

Over the last months more and more web services have started using system fonts, and so will Piwik 3. System fonts look better, improve language support and give you a more native, familiar feeling.

New widgets

With the “Latest Piwik Plugin Updates” widget you won’t miss any newly added or updated plugin anymore. This will help you learn about and discover the useful plugins and themes available on the Marketplace.

Super users can now see at a glance the current state of the Piwik system, thanks to the new “System Check” and “System Summary” widgets.

API Changes

Piwik is the leading open analytics platform, highly customisable and extensible thanks to a flexible plugins architecture and a design based on APIs. In this new major Piwik 3 release, we significantly improve the foundation of our open platform and several of its core APIs.

The new Widgets and Reporting API makes it possible to add reports and widgets to any existing reporting page. In the past, reporting pages had to be created manually which was time consuming and it was hard to maintain a consistent look across different reporting pages. Now reporting pages are generated automatically by the Piwik platform.

The Plugin Settings API was changed to improve performance and to let plugin developers customize the Websites Manager. This is one step towards our goal to let users not only manage websites but also mobile apps, cars, coffee machines or any other thing.

To see a full list of changes in the Piwik 3 analytics platform, have a look at the developer changelog.

Developer docs

The Piwik Developer Zone is full of guides and API references to help developers understand, integrate and extend Piwik. As some APIs have changed in the Piwik 3 release it is now possible to select the Piwik version in the top right corner of the developer zone.

Release date

The first Piwik 3 beta release will be available in the next four weeks. Beta testers automatically receive the update if they are subscribed to the “Latest Beta” release channel. The final Piwik 3 release will be ready before the end of the year. If you want to give it a try, you can either use Piwik from Git and check out the “3.x-dev” branch, or download Piwik 3 from GitHub.

Closing thoughts

With faster & more beautiful reports, better APIs and more stability, Piwik 3 is a big step forward for all Piwik users. As our mission is to create, as a community, the leading international open source web analytics platform that gives every user full control of their data, we are very excited to introduce you to this upcoming release.